Peltier denied parole - Native Americans' Mandela must remain in prison

Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker (GfbV) / Society for Threatened Peoples is extremely disappointed to learn that Native American civil rights activist Leonard Peltier must stay in prison. Last Friday in Fargo (North Dakota) U.S. attorney Drew Wrigley announced the Parole Commission's decision not to approve Peltier's release on parole after 33 years in prison. "The Commission has dealt a severe blow not just to Peltier himself but to thousands of Native Americans who see him as the figurehead of the struggle to achieve their civil rights", according to Yvonne Bangert, GfbV/STP's Indigenous Peoples officer, who remarked disappointedly on Monday that "the rejection of Peltier's application is utterly incomprehensible, because he long ago completed the 30 years that is normally served for this kind of sentence."

Peltier received two life sentences in 1977 after being found guilty of killing two FBI agents on the basis of the perjured evidence of an alleged eye-witness. The two agents were killed during a shoot-out with members of the American Indian Movement on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota in 1975. The eye-witness later retracted her statement, which had allegedly been extracted under pressure by the FBI. Important evidence was withheld from the Defence, for example the results of a ballistic analysis that ruled out Peltier's gun as the murder weapon. State attorney Lynn Crooks admitted eight years after Peltier was convicted and sentenced that the government had no idea who had killed the two agents or what role Peltier had played in the affair. The civil rights activist will be 65 years old on 12 September and intends to appeal the Parole Commission's decision.

"Peltier's reintegration into normal society will not pose any problems", Bangert observed, "because he already has a home on his Anishinabe (Chippewa) Turtle Mountain reservation in North Dakota to return to and a job waiting for him as an art teacher at the local college". As a young man Peltier was keen to study art and during his time in prison has become an artist of note. His pictures are owned by prominent collectors including Oliver Stone, Peter Coyote, Jane Fonda, Val Kilmer and Michael Apted. He has used the proceeds from his work to fund his own defence and also to support educational, health and other community projects for young people on the Indian reservation. As one of 13 brothers and sisters Peltier grew up in great poverty and at the age of eight he was sent to a government boarding school where the students were forbidden to speak their own language and subjected to physical and mental abuse.

Many prominent figures have campaigned on Leonard Peltier's behalf, among them Simon Wiesenthal, the Nobel Peace Prize winners Rigoberta Menchú and Nelson Mandela. In 1996 in an initiative organised by GfbV / STP more than 70 members of the German Federal Parliament joined former Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker in calling for Peltier to be granted a pardon. They included former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, former Defence Minister Rudolf Scharping and Justice Minister Herta Däubler Gmelin and Gregor Gysi, Hans-Ulrich Klose, Count Otto Lambsdorff, Christian Schwarz-Schilling and Antje Vollmer.

The Berlin publishers Turandot Verlag awarded Peltier its literature prize for his book "Prison Writing: My Life is My Sun Dance". In 1986 he received the Spanish Human Rights Commission's International Human Rights Prize.